


How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Season 3

by notagarroter (redbuttonhole)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 17:58:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10972458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbuttonhole/pseuds/notagarroter
Summary: When television reflects our own worst selves back at us.





	How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Season 3

The first time I watched series 3 all the way through, it left me with a lot of complicated shall we say "feels".  It wasn't exactly that I hated it, though I definitely didn't love it – it's more that it left me feeling sort of discombobulated and uncomfortable and out of sorts and I couldn't put my finger on why. 

* * *

 

As I sat with the experience and thought about it for a few days, one explanation that came to mind was the proliferation of exceptional characters.

Sherlock is, obviously, a show about an exceptional character.  He is almost supernaturally brilliant, eerily beautiful, superlative in every way.  That's pretty much the definition of the show right there.

But in order to be exceptional, Sherlock has to be surrounded by the ordinary – the contrast is how we know he's special.  As Sherlock so ungallantly points out in his best man speech, John's really good at providing that contrast.  But not just John – Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Molly, Sally, Anderson...  Sherlock has a whole coterie of characters who highlight how extraordinary he is through their very averageness.  This, it seemed, was the basic the premise of the show.

There were some exceptions, of course.  Moriarty and Adler are superlative in their own ways...  but they are villains.  As much as Sherlock might want to be friends with them, he can't, because they have chosen a different side of the game.  And there's Mycroft. 

(an aside: In other incarnations of Sherlock Holmes (including canon), I have always gotten really annoyed every time Mycroft shows up.  The great tragedy of Sherlock Holmes (in my mind) was always how alone he is – the only people in the world who can truly understand him and speak to him as equals are his worst enemies.  That must be a very lonely pinnacle to inhabit.

But Mycroft throws all that out of whack by being *another* Holmes, just as brilliant, and on Sherlock's side.  In a dozen adaptations, I felt like Mycroft added nothing interesting to the Holmes myth.  But Mark Gatiss is so wonderful, and the chemistry between them is so fantastic, that I've been won over to this Mycroft, even if he weakens Sherlock's tragic solitude a bit.)

Okay, but allowing for Mycroft, this version of Sherlock still _basically_ gave us a hero who was marked by difference – exceptional but misunderstood, living in a world of goldfish.

But then series 3 comes along, and something seemed to shift.  Because now it wasn't just Sherlock and Mycroft and a few villains who were exceptional.  It was also Mary.  And Billy Wiggins.  And...  Mrs Hudson? 

 

When Sherlock made that point about Mrs Hudson during the Watson Family Domestic, I lost it about the same way John did.  I understood just how John felt – here I thought I was watching a show about one exceptional person and a lot of ordinary people like me.  And now it turns out that everyone on the damn show is some kind of fancy pants killer or sociopath or genius EXCEPT John?  I felt like the rules had been changed mid-stream: instead of Sherlock Holmes, I was watching League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  It seemed silly and over the top. 

It also struck me as unfair to John. Where John started out as the normal, relatable guy who helps Sherlock make his way in the world, now John was totally outnumbered. How must it feel to be the only normal guy in a club full of violent sociopathic geniuses?  Pretty bad, I'd guess.  
  
So that was my initial reaction to series 3.

But then I rewatched.  (and rewatched and rewatched.)

And eventually, something clicked.  I got what Sherlock is saying: it's not just that John is  _attracted_ to that kind of person -- John is one of them too. Which I already knew, even if I didn't let myself see it – I knew it because I watched him kill the cabbie in the very first episode.  And then giggle about it. 

That's when the whole point of this season, and maybe the whole show, crystallized for me: this isn't just John's problem.  This is our problem, too. This is the audience.  
  
We've been able to go along watching the show with John as our "audience surrogate," feeling like "Okay there are some bad guys, and some morally ambiguous guys, and they do some Not Good things, but we are not like them.  We are like John, we are the normal good guy." But the show is saying, _gotcha!_  There is no normal here. There is no good guy.  You, audience member, crave this violence and danger and moral ambiguity, just like John does.  It's what you like.    
  
Sally Donovan says of Sherlock in episode 1, "You know why he’s here? He’s not paid or anything. He likes it. He gets off on it. The weirder the crime, the more he gets off."  In series 3, the show reveals: That's you. You're Sherlock.  We all are. 

And when Sherlock calls himself a sociopath one more time and shoots Magnussen in the head, the show is whispering, "You know you wanted to do it, too." 

 

Series 3 is uncomfortable because it says we are all complicit in these crimes. But I realise now that I wouldn't have it any other way. 


End file.
